Day 23

“I tell you the truth, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can only do what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does.” —JOHN 5:19

Jesus Christ had no agenda of His own. Everything He said and did was an expression of the will of His Father. He said in John 14:10, “Don’t you believe that I am in the Father, and that the Father is in me? The words I say to you are not just my own. Rather, it is the Father, living in me, who is doing his work.” To see Jesus in action was to see His Father in action! This was not a claim to deity (though Jesus was never less than God, but at all times co-equal with the Father and the Holy Spirit), but rather He was speaking of how He lived as a man. This is the nature of true humanity.

In John 5:19, Jesus said, “I tell you the truth, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does”. In other words, He was saying to the Jews who were attacking him, “Don’t blame me when you don’t like what I do and don’t congratulate me when you do like what I do. “By myself I can do nothing”, and He goes on to say, “I judge only as I hear, and my judgment is just, for I seek not to please myself but him who sent me” (John 5:30). Jesus related every situation, crisis, and opportunity He faced to His Father. He did nothing in independence of His Father, but everything in dependence on Him.

How did that dependence operate? Very simply, Jesus lived in obedience to what He knew to be the will of His Father, and in dependence upon the resources of His Father. That too is how we are to live, in dependence and obedience to Jesus, for what we do effectively cannot be separated from what Jesus is doing.

In John 15:5 Jesus said to His disciples, “If you abide in me, I will abide in you and you will bear much fruit. Without me you can do nothing”; that is, you can do as much as I can do without my Father – nothing. Conversely, if we obey Him and trust Him, we will discover with amazement what God will do. As the Son needed the Father, so we need Him. As the Father was available to work through the Son, so the Son is available to work through us. Once we know that, we can obey with boldness what He gives us to do, trusting Him alone for the consequences. And He will look after those!

PRAYER: Thank You, Jesus, for always being available to me. Help me to live my life in obedience and dependence on You, just as You did with our Father as a man on earth.

TO REFLECT UPON: What areas of my life do I need to trust and depend on Jesus more?